Edtech Insiders
Edtech Insiders
Driving Economic Mobility: Edtech Solutions for Global Impact with Ellie Bertani of GitLab Foundation
Ellie Bertani is the President and CEO of the GitLab Foundation, with the mission of improving lifetime earnings and economic mobility of workers worldwide. With a background in the nonprofit, public, and private sectors, she brings a shared value, cross-sectoral approach to drive sustainable impact.
Prior to joining the GitLab Foundation, Ellie spent ten years in the private sector, with roles at Wells Fargo and Walmart. Much of her work focused on frontline worker economic stability and mobility, and included work on instant access to earned pay, scheduling predictability, removing hiring barriers, and developing internal learning and career pathing programs. In 2020 Ellie was awarded Walmart’s highest recognition, the Sam Walton Entrepreneurship Award, for the development of LiveBetterU, the largest free educational benefits program in the US, and Walmart’s most successful diversity & inclusion program.
Earlier in her career, Ellie spent nearly ten years in the nonprofit and public sector, including positions with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. State Department, Third Sector Capital Partners, and Rotary International. She received her Master of Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and her MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.
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This episode of edtech insiders is sponsored by magic edtech. magic EdTech has helped the world's top educational publishers and ad tech companies build learning products and platforms that millions of learners and teachers use every day. Chances are that you're probably using a learning product that they've helped design or build. Companies like Pearson McGraw Hill, imagine learning and the American Museum of Natural History have used their help to design or build some of their learning products. Now magic wants to bring its pedagogical and engineering expertise to make your key learning products accessible, sticky and well adopted. Check them out at MagicEdtech.com, which is magicedtech.com and when you get in touch tell them EdTech Insider sent you. Welcome to Tech insiders where we speak with founders operators investors and thought leaders in the education technology industry and report on cutting edge news in this fast evolving field from around the globe. From AI to xr to K 12 to l&d, you'll find everything you need here on edtech insiders. And if you liked the podcast, please give us a rating and a review so others can find it more easily. Ellie Bertani is President and CEO of the GitLab Foundation, with the mission of improving lifetime earnings and economic mobility of workers worldwide. With a background in the nonprofit public and private sectors. She brings a cross sectoral approach to drive sustainable impact. Prior to joining the GitLab Foundation, Ellie spent 10 years in the private sector with roles at Wells Fargo and Walmart. Much of her work focused on frontline worker economic stability and mobility and included work on instant access to earned pay, scheduling predictability, removing hiring barriers and developing internal learning and career pathing programs. In 2020 he was awarded Walmart's highest recognition the Sam Walton Entrepreneurship Award for the development of live better you the largest free educational benefits program in the US. And Walmart's most successful diversity and inclusion program. Earlier in her career. Ellie spent nearly 10 years in the nonprofit and public sector, including positions with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the US State Department, third sector capital partners and Rotary International. She received her Master of Public Administration from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and her MBA from MIT School of Management. Ellie Bertani, Welcome to EdTech insiders.
Ellie Bertani:Thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
Alexander Sarlin:I'm really excited to have you here. You're doing such interesting work in the education and workforce space. You know, you personally have worked to provide educational benefits, economic stability and mobility to so many people over the years, you've worked in government, you worked in philanthropy, you've worked in the private sector, give our listeners a little overview of your work and some of your philosophy on how to help people. Well, as
Ellie Bertani:you said, I've really, I feel fortunate to have been able to spend time in lots of different sectors and learned, hopefully the best of the best of all of them. Early in my career. I spent time in frontline nonprofits, but also almost five years in philanthropy, including time with the Gates Foundation, which really taught me a lot and solidified my interest in cross sectoral approaches, and a focus on outcomes. later in my career, I spent almost 10 years in the private sector, including about eight years at Walmart, where my role was really focused on frontline worker stability and mobility, and learned a lot about what works in a business environment and what it takes to try to make impact at scale. So you know, every sector, I think, has a role to play in improving people's lives. I'll just give a couple of examples that I think have influenced me and really shaped how I think about trying to drive impact. When I was at gates, I actually worked in their global health program. And some of the things that influenced me the most, we're seeing how the foundation really tried to use its dollars to build incentives for the private sector to focus in areas that might not be first and foremost for the business. So for example, Gates figured out how to encourage pharmaceutical companies to invest in neglected diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, HIV by building financial incentives, market incentives, pharmaceutical companies to benefit from that. So they built a fast track process through the government that if pharmaceutical companies invested in neglected diseases, they could get one of their blockbuster drugs approved moved in record time, which often had billions of dollars for these pharmaceutical companies. So it was sort of a win win. And that really taught me a lot about collaboration about trying to think outside the box and develop unusual solutions to drive the markets to work better. One other example our share is, from my time at Walmart, I helped build what is now the largest private sector educational benefits program called Live better you that has served now 104,000 students to get their degrees or credentials for free for the frontline workforce. And what really, I think, drove that work was a combination, some things I learned first, right idea right time, the leadership of Walmart at the time was really open to new ideas on how to be better employers for their workforce, they had received a lot of critique and criticism that was probably very well founded, and also understood that the high turnover of their frontline workforce was damaging them from a financial perspective. And so we made the business case and it it proved out over time that extending educational benefits would really help retain frontline workers and motivate them to stay at the company, get their degrees, get their high school diplomas get their short form credentials, and the payoff for the company in retention alone, more than paid for the program. Now, those opportunities don't always come around. But I think it's really important to take those learnings and use those now in this new role with GitLab foundation and how we can influence much beyond philanthropy alone.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, that kind of, you know, cross sector incentive based approach is so exciting. And I think it's something we really need in the education world, we have a lot of bureaucracy, we have a lot of different, you know, complexities that could be really smoothed out in some interesting ways. If the right incentives were in place years ago, definitely Kohler at Coursera used to always say, you know, do well by doing good, and it strikes me listening to your you talk about, you know, Walmart, recouping the cost of the program, by helping workers or all of these, you know, pharmaceutical companies doing malaria drugs, and actually making money off of them. When you can put those incentives together, the impact and the financial incentives, amazing things can happen very quickly. So let's talk about the GitLab foundation. It's a really interesting foundation. So I'll give my little two minute 32nd intro, but obviously, you can give the real intro but basically, you know, GitLab is a development, security and operations, I call it dev SEC ops platform, it's a technical platform has 30 million registered users very successful tech company. But the GitLab Foundation has this mission of supporting people to grow their lifetime earnings through education, training, access to opportunities and systems change on a global scale, you know, close quote there. So give us an overview of you know, GitLab Foundation, its relationship to Git lab and how you're fulfilling its mission.
Ellie Bertani:Well, GitLab Foundation was launched last year, just in September 2022, as part of GitLab inks mission to create a world in which everyone can contribute. The company leadership felt that it was important to support organizations that could further that goal on a global scale. And when git lab went public, in October of 2021, it dedicated 1% of its chairs to further this aim. And very interestingly and unusually, the CEO of GitLab, agreed to match that from his personal funds. So we have the equivalent of 2% of the company equity, and we're a spend down organization. So we're taking that money, and we're deploying it as quickly as possible to really affect people's lives, which I'm really excited about. And if we do well, they'll reinvest and we'll continue on. So we've got our roots firmly in technology, thanks to get lab. But we as a foundation are an independent entity, we don't sit within get Lab, which gives us a lot more autonomy to pursue our mission than some other corporate foundations. Our mission, as you outlined, is to accelerate ways for people to gain the skills and opportunities needed to increase their lifetime earnings. And most of our activities are around education upskilling training, often with a tech influenced elements because we care about efficiency and scale and our impact. We think a lot about also how to reduce barriers to training, education and jobs. So there'll be work for us at both the person to person level and the systems and the market level. We know that people everywhere aspire to improve their lives and support their families and contribute to their communities. But often this is very, very difficult, depending on their starting point. So through our investments, we hope to support people in particular who are living below a living wage to significantly grow their income. It's
Alexander Sarlin:incredible mission and you We talk on this podcast a lot about how the purported purpose of education, everybody has a slightly different, you know, reason they they seek education or training. But over time, more and more people have answered on surveys that they're getting education to increase future earnings. That is sort of the core reason they're doing it. And that's always been true of training and certification. So I love that the mission is specifically about that it feels really aligned to what learners are looking for when they're seeking technical or training education in any way. And you just mentioned you focus on individuals or families are making below a living wage. And that's wherever they are below a living wage. And you have a focus on specific groups that are disadvantaged due to factors such as social background, disability, gender, and you focus on a few geographies in both in the Americas and in Africa. So tell us about your your target geographies, your target audience and sort of the people you're seeking to help immediately,
Ellie Bertani:right? Well, as you might imagine, we spent time developing our strategy over the first few months as an organization. And what we really care about is where we believe we might be able to make an outsized impact in lifetime earnings. And so that leads us to focus in some specific areas. I'll start with geography and then talk a little bit about some of the populations we're interested in. We have actually built our strategy with an explicit goal to help at least 1 million people afford a better life. And we were pretty intentional about putting a number against this, we're very results and outcomes oriented, as I've alluded to. And so we wanted to draw a line in the sand. It's a big goal. But we think over the lifetime of the foundation, we can achieve it. So we have focused initially on several geographic areas, which include the United States, as well as Latin America in Sub Saharan Africa. And we have focused in those areas because our research showed that according to criteria we really care about, we have an opportunity to make an outsized impact in these locations. So we've looked at where there's relatively low economic mobility, which is one of the reasons the United States jumped out even though it's a higher income country, the disparity and economic mobility continues to worsen, which is really unfortunate, but also in international markets, where we can learn from other funders and nonprofits, right, as a new entity, we want to be able to move quickly, we can't go it alone. So we look for areas where aligned and similar funders are operating, and where there's a good nonprofit, strong nonprofit sector, and where we can operate according to our core values, which include values around transparency and collaboration. And in some countries, it's a lot harder to get that transparency to know whether you're making progress to be able to collaborate with not just nonprofits, but potentially the government. And so we looked at those factors as we were narrowing down our focus areas. So this year we're starting in the United States in Kenya and Colombia, is areas of focus. And we're very excited to see what impact we may be able to make in those countries. In terms of population areas, we are still learning as we go where we think we can have an outsize impact. But some of our initial grantees do support specific groups, including formerly incarcerated individuals, which we think there's a big opportunity in this country to make a big impact in that space. We over incarcerate and provide very few opportunities for people reentering society. And there's massive opportunity to really help those individuals. And then we also have grantees that focus on recent immigrants and refugees. We see these groups as among those that have some of the biggest needs, but also the biggest opportunities for increasing incomes quickly.
Alexander Sarlin:So you mentioned that GitLab Foundation is a spin down organization that you're really pushing to get efficiency to get impact as fast as possible. And with that in mind, you know, you've completed a number of grants several already in the last year, all of which are incredibly interesting. And they serve the populations you're naming here. And they use both educational and technical components, which is the Ed Tech part of this world to support all of these different specific communities. So if you don't mind, I'd love to just walk through each of these grants and hear your thinking behind it because I think they're fascinating. And our listeners will really feel inspired and want to sort of learn more about each of them. So I'd like to start with the one that first caught my eye about GitLab foundation and it was this investment in je FF has Jobs for the Future at nonprofit and Burning Glass. And these are two really powerful organizations in the workforce space. They do a lot of research they do. They have a huge amount of data. This is a $3 million grant, specifically to help the these organizations make sense of the enormous number I have nondegree credentials out there, which is over a million different credentials, according to the credential Engine project. So, so many different credentials, very disorganized space, nobody knows what's worthwhile, or which is really going to help people get a job. And this grant is specifically to sort of work that out, it says, to make sense of this fragmented education and training marketplace. And that just excites me enormously because it is an incredible space that is incredibly fragmented. It's so confusing, it's very hard to tell somebody, this credential is going to get you here. This one's going to get you there. So tell us about this grant and this space, and what you're hoping to achieve with it.
Ellie Bertani:Absolutely. So short form credentials or non degreed credentials. I think the most salient example is like tech boot camps. Although there are to your point millions of different types of everything from badges all the way up through, you know, one year degree or non degrees, but credentials that people can earn. And this space has no quality signal, right? So unlike in higher ed, where there are creditors that helped confirm what are the best institutions are you getting value for money, who's really delivering quality for students, there's nothing like that in this space is the Wild West, that creates a lot of problems, it creates problems for consumers, workers and learners who are trying to pick programs that will help them get a good job and earn more money. It creates problems for employers who don't know who to hire, right, they hope that any particular credential will give them the skills they need to have someone work successfully in a job, but they really have no way of knowing it even doesn't work for investors who don't know where to put their money, right to help which which organization is going to grow and be a leader in the market. And for policymakers who would love to use items like Pell funding to support low income individuals to upskill but have no signal as to which which ones are should be eligible for Pell funding. So the market isn't working. And this is an example of sort of the system's level work that we hope to invest in over time. So we are we are investing in jobs for the future and Burning Glass, two outstanding organizations, one that really focuses on workforce development across the United States as JF F and Burning Glass, which is the best in class, labor market analytics organization that has, to your point, a tremendous amount of access to data, and incredibly skilled analysts, that can help us build collaboratively this signal that the market needs and what they're doing. And in fact, they already demonstrated at horizons after two short months, a quick MVP of their initial product, they're looking at all the data and building an inference engine that will help deliver a signal of what quality means. So the first step is how do we how do we think about quality? Well, we think about quality in terms of earnings, we think about quality in terms of cost to deliver, we think about quality, in terms of achievement of skills, are there a number of different factors that they're assessing, and they're scraping data that's publicly available, because previous attempts at this work have used provider donated data, which is very, very hard to get does not represent the full market, and does not, you have to wait on it rather, so it's not in the moment at your fingertips. And so they're using publicly available data from a number of government, institutional and other sources to build this inference engine and deliver and adapt a signal basically, like scorecard that any individual or employer could use to make these decisions. But they're actually going further. Their goal is to build an actual product with API's that can connect to applicant tracking systems, like Workday is of the world, the SAP systems of the world, so that any of the big technology companies can integrate this data and help employers then sort and sift applicants, etc, based on the highest quality credential. So it's really trying to make the market. We know it will take multiple years to get there and really strong collaborations because there's so many stakeholders out in the environment that care about how this is developed. And so collaboration and partnership is really the heart of this work. But we're really, really excited to try to get this up and moving for this country.
Alexander Sarlin:To me, it is thrilling, you know, I mean, this is this inference engineer mentioning the idea of a clear signal coming out of these non degree credentials that can unpack various quality of each credential could be a huge game changer. I mean, we see skills based hiring mentioned everywhere that Congress met on it. The US Congress met on it just this week, and they said it was one of the only things that bipartisan agreement they all agree that we need tilt skills based hiring But there's just not nobody knows how to do it. Because nobody knows what signal actually affects what skill. And so this project is unbelievably exciting. Slight tangent, give me one moment for this. I think it's relevant here. I've been reading this amazing book called The great upheaval, Arthur Levine and Scott Van Pelt, basically about the history of higher ed. And the accreditation system that you mentioned, there, really, there were like 10 years in that turn of the, you know, 19th century, you know, 1890s, the turn of the 20th century, I guess, where they basically created the concept of, you know, what is a degree, what is a unit, what is a course, people disagreed, what these things were, every college did it differently. And they just had to standardize and come together and figure out how to make this into a system that could actually have a clear signal. And they, you know, they did, and by doing that, it blew up the number of students at university, then the GI Bill made it even bigger. And basically, you know, that need for standardization really unlocked almost everything about that system. So this feels like that moment for the non degree credentials. If we could have standardization know what things are worth have that in the ATS. That's unbelievably important part of this, so that people who are reviewing resumes, can actually know that this credential is worth this much. And it's you don't just fall back on degrees. It's incredibly exciting. Do you feel like you're building that kind of change in the workforce? Boy, I
Ellie Bertani:sure hope so I would say this is this is incredibly complex work that's been attempted and failed in the past. And we recognize this. So this is a high risk, high reward kind of investment for us. But it's a little bit akin to what I said at the beginning, I think there's a moment in time that both from a technological capability from a stakeholder engagement perspective, like the moment is now to tackle this in in a different way than it's been tackled in the past. I know, it'll be incredibly hard. There's all sorts of, you know, concerns and questions that that have come out of some of our initial presentation of this work rightly, but also a lot of excitement and a lot of hope. And so I think by really trying to bring in the right partners, hear them listen, answer their concerns, and put them on the roadmap. We can't do everything all at once. But prioritizing the work and showing them when they're all they'll be able to get their questions answered, and their concerns addressed in the work, they will be able to make progress against this. And what I love is this unifying hope, a recognition This is work is critically important for all of these different actors. And that in particular, right, the little guy who sometimes is getting screwed by paying for a program that isn't getting them the results they need. Right, everyone's holding that at the heart of why this is so important to get it to get done.
Alexander Sarlin:Yes, yeah, we've got to make sure that was also happened 100 years ago, the colleges that weren't doing the right things disappeared, they got pushed out of existence, because they weren't reaching the quality bar that became the expectation. So I totally agree. And that's something the government always struggles with, because as soon as they start giving government funding, Pell grants and whatnot, to students to be able to go to nondegree courses, they're very worried that there'll be all these bad actors flooding in and taking that money, you know, and not giving any any meaningful education or skilling. So it's a very careful balance. It sounds like you know, the, the technical aspect of this is going to be fascinating as well, just how it all integrates into the ATS is how it integrates into just how it compares these different outcomes. I'm really excited to see that happen. So let's move around the world. Okay, yeah. Your next grant is for a company called Generation. That's a nonprofit in Kenya to expand a pilot program that's to train and connect 9000 Digital freelancers to prepare them for remote work. That's a very hot topic right now. Tell us about this grant. And what generation does.
Ellie Bertani:Yeah, so generation is an amazing nonprofit that we love. They operate in numerous markets around the world, not just Kenya, but they really focus on upskilling people for employment in high demand industries across the world. And it's very much play space. So obviously, some industries are in demand in some places, not others, but they're incredibly data centric and outcome centric, which means partnering with them gives us access to a wide amount of data that can help us figure out what programs are most impactful and where to put our money in Kenya specifically. Over the last 10 years, the country has seen significant economic growth, but the impact of that growth has not reached a majority of Kenyans. For a bit of perspective. Kenya is the largest economy in East Africa, but also has the highest unemployment rate in the region, with young people being hit the hardest. And so what generation is is experimenting with Is this idea of upskilling for freelance work, which is very new, it's a new area of work for them. And we're helping with this demonstration project with its aspirations to scale it over the next couple of years, the technology sector in Kenya has shown significant growth, and brings a lot of opportunity for those who have the right skills to support access to employment. And access to these jobs is particularly interesting because freelancing jobs give people the opportunity to play in the international the global market, which has significantly higher pay, and can drive higher earnings than the domestic market in Kenya. So it's particularly interesting for us to experiment in this space. So generation's digital freelancing Mentorship Program helps young people access careers as freelancers in jobs such as virtual assistants, audio transcription, data entry, pretty entry level roles, but again, paying significantly higher wages and they have access to in their markets. And since 2022. So just in the past year, 600 people have been supported through this program. And more than half of them are now successfully working as freelancers, which has significantly increased their income. Prior to this, about 85% of these individuals were unemployed. So it really makes a difference. Our initial grant of about $270,000 is supporting the expansion of this mentorship program, which we believe is key to in ensuring sustainable increases in freelancing income. The mentors are highly experienced freelancers, and they're paired with the students, and some of them are even program alumni and have a history of successfully securing and completing contract jobs. So we are expanding their mentorship program to 12 months, and testing whether or not we get better outcomes, even higher incomes, more durability of those incomes over time, as these freelancers build out their online portfolios and build their skills. Over the next five years, this work is projected to support over 9000 people in Kenya, and if successful, we will be looking to expand it into other countries as well.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, it's really amazing. I mean, going from, you know, unemployed youth to technical skilled that you can work, you know, remotely or for international work and make more than the local wage. That's, you know, life changing
Ellie Bertani:trash opportunity.
Alexander Sarlin:fairly big change. I mean, I'm sure people are incredibly excited about it. So what are the regions does it work in now,
Ellie Bertani:generation works in Europe, it works in India and Southeast Asia and in Latin America, and in Africa, so really, all around the world and select countries. And they've been around for quite a while, and they're not a new organization. So they're well established. And we just think they have one of the top teams we've spoken to so far, and our exploration of nonprofits
Alexander Sarlin:is fantastic. And the combination of you know, remote work becoming the accepted norm, pretty much throughout the world. And the pace of change for these digital skills continuing to go faster and faster. Feels like they're skating ahead of the puck with this idea of really are. Yeah. So you mentioned, you know, formerly incarcerated individuals is one of your target populations. And the next grant super interesting, a company called free world, or maybe it's a nonprofit, that is about enrolling formerly incarcerated individuals in commercial driver's license classes to place them in stable careers in trucking. And it's a full stack automated online training solution that really is about the reentry experience such an interesting project. I'd love to hear more about it and why this program is so important. And this is in the US, I think primarily right? That's exactly
Ellie Bertani:right. So we love free world. They're doing amazing work and driving such high impact. And just to give a sense of the scope of the problem. There are 600,000 people in the US who reenter their communities following incarceration each year. And they have incredibly high barriers to employment. The average person who re enters half of them earn less than$10,000 a year upon reentry for the first few years. And so it's really hard for them to provide for their families, establish credit, and earn enough money to get their basic needs met. So what free world does so successfully, is help train formerly incarcerated individuals to become CDL licensed and become truck drivers very shortly after they come out of prison. Our grant will help free world which is incredibly interesting tech enabled nonprofit to scale this program that addresses not only these issues of unemployment, but also does so by filling a critical employment gap in the supply chain. Right. So Trucking is particularly interesting to us because there's a huge labor demand and very low supply, which means outsize wages are on the table for people who have Have the right licensing. So free world leverages its full stack automated online solution does all of its curriculum development in house and deploys it online. And then partners with trucking companies to do the on the ground truck driving component, but also offers a suite of additional services for its trainees, including helping them reestablish their credit, doing things that you and I wouldn't even think of like getting access to their birth certificates, which is requisite for employment, and many people don't know how to get that also helps them find safe housing and intermittent housing while they are waiting and going through their training program to become employed. So they're really thinking about it from an end user perspective and thinking about what are all of the components needed to make these individuals successful, and they're not stopping just with training, which is critical and important, but insufficient for many of these reentering citizens. Our grant is supporting, obviously, putting people through the program but in addition, helping freerolls scale in two important ways, one, by helping fund the development of their data infrastructure, so they can better track outcomes over time, which is important to us and important for them. But most importantly, to help unlock Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act funding for free world. So this is WIOA funding. This is government funding at the state and local level. And if and when and as free world is tapping into that funding, it's really going to help them expand more and more into new states, and expand across the US they have a goal of serving 10,000 individuals this year, which is an incredible accomplishment in the few short years that they've been an organization.
Alexander Sarlin:It's really a fascinating organization. And the combination of doing the automated online solution for the I'm sure for the sort of factual declarative the things you need to know to pass the exam combined with on the ground work, obviously practice driving and parking and all the things you need to know to drive a truck physically, it's a really clever sort of hybrid solution. And I just admire that particular aspect of blended learning. And then of course, when doing those wraparound services, that's what they sometimes call them. But you know, helping people actually get over those final barriers to get into a career risk. That was credit, it's really exciting, feels like another opportunity where huge numbers of people 600,000 a year that blows my mind, are there and just need a few things in a relatively short period to completely change their life trajectory. And it feels like these inflection points seem like a real target of what GitLab Foundation is doing.
Ellie Bertani:That's right, I would recommend you try to get a hold of their CEO and bring him in because his tech mindset in this space is incredibly interesting. He talks about how, you know, formerly incarcerated individuals often haven't been using technology for many years, and may not even know how to use a mobile phone, smartphone when they come out. And so as they develop their technology, they think about a one touch solution, literally, you press a single button and you get everything you need. And it takes a different mindset for that kind of tech development, and to build that kind of user experience. And I've been you think about for many consumers. And so how he's attacking that problem. It's just been fascinating to talk with him with he's really exceptional leader.
Alexander Sarlin:That's amazing. Yeah, I would love that connection. I'd love to hear more about that program. And I'm sure my listeners would as well, because that is Ed Tech in a very specific, really important context. So let's talk one more we've talked about formerly incarcerated individuals. We've talked about, you know, digital workers and freelancers, we've talked a little bit about people with non degree credentials. The final population, as you mentioned, is immigrant populations. And you have a grant to a company called upwardly global, that is all about helping immigrant populations get into the type of jobs that they can have living wages instead of these, you know, quote, unquote, survival jobs that we we see so often tell us more about this upwardly global grant, it sounds like a fascinating program as well.
Ellie Bertani:Yeah. So upwardly global is this amazing organization that serves recent immigrants or refugees who are coming to this country and have skills from their former countries that it's very difficult for them to understand how to apply here in the United States. So as you mentioned, many refugees and immigrants, in fact, over 2 million are underemployed in the US, meaning that they have degrees or certifications for higher wage jobs than they can hold in this country. So upwardly global, finds and assist these people to re credential and make them eligible for higher paying jobs than say, being an Uber driver here in the United States. I'll give one example of a story that they shared with us that I love. There's a woman named Lulu who was one of the most accomplished female engineers in Saudi Arabia, she graduated the top of her class in a technical STEM field and advance your career. In a context that's very difficult, right against all cultural norms in Saudi Arabia, she had to flee to the US as an asylee. And she could only find work as a bartender. And her employers really didn't know how to translate her experience and credentials to us employment context. So she ended up going to upwardly global, and they helped her re credential and now she is a successful engineer here in the United States. But navigating that system and understanding both the cultural context as well as the employment context is incredibly challenging. And that's what upwardly global does is their bread and butter. So our grant specifically is a $750,000. Grant to them over several years, to help them scale their already successful programs. In particular, we're actually investing in something kind of unsexy, which is the development of their learning management system, because much of their training, and re credentialing is through online access, and an online program. And upwardly global has aspirations to not just use it through their own locations where they help navigate with immigrants and refugees, but also to extend those services to other nonprofits that do similar kind of work with refugees and new immigrants across the United States. So there are hundreds of these other immigrant refugee serving nonprofits, and this will expand then the region, the extent of services have upwardly global far beyond the current population that they serve. So it's a really great way to sort of see what's working and help scale it rapidly, to help more and more people over time.
Alexander Sarlin:It's truly exciting. And you know, a statistic coming from them is that they've transitioned over 9700 new immigrants and refugees out of poverty into professional roles, the average increase in earnings in 2022, the average increase was $58,000. Because, you know, you mentioned the enormous inequality in the US and how difficult it is to sort of move from one strata to the other. And this is exactly what happens there. People come from other countries, it used to be almost a stereotype in New York, you've talked to the taxi driver, and they'd be a doctor, or they'd be a surgeon, or they'd be a, you know, advanced rocket scientists wherever they came from. And then they're here driving taxis. And the difference between the work they are qualified to do and that they've trained for and the work they can get is massive. It's another great example of sort of an inflection point, helping people get over that one hump of figuring out how to make that education transfer can be life changing, completely change people's trajectories, and be a win win for the country, because you have people contributing in even more amazing ways to the American economy as well. Right? Yeah, it's really, really exciting. So there's a number of sort of through lines in these grants, and you've talked about a lot of them. But there's this emphasis on Fast Track training, getting people from one place to the other as quickly and efficiently as possible, often using technology. There's a third line of skills acquisition outside of traditional education. So you know, we haven't talked about universities once, in this entire call. There's lots of other ways to educate. And on, obviously, on populations that have often been overlooked as having incredible potential right immigrants and refugees, remote workers in Africa, formerly incarcerated individuals. They're really, really exciting. So that's my outside take. But I'd love to hear you talk about sort of the through lines of when you you must talk to many different potential grantees, and the ones that you choose, how do you sort of put draw a line between them? What is the consistent philosophy behind all of them?
Ellie Bertani:Yeah, well, I like to make a distinction here, I'll talk about both aspects around what we invest in and how we invest because I think the how is really important, certainly in these early investments that really connects them, and where we're going to be focusing as we go forward, which I think we'll talk about the what even more, a lot of the through lines in our current set of grantees are related to our organizational values, or how we hope to show up with our partners in achievement of our Northstar goal of increasing lifetime earnings. Some of these key values include a focus on results, right, so I've talked a lot about outcomes. We prioritize grantees that are laser focused on outcomes we care about rather than just inputs or outputs. So I like to give the example of when I was at Walmart, focused on this educational benefits program and building it. Most traditional education benefits programs focus on companies like to talk about how many people are enrolled, but you don't ever really hear about how many have graduated and right the outcome we care about is graduation. Like that's where the company gets to benefit them. ploy gets the higher earnings. And so when we look at grantees who is really focused on outcomes, and willing to track it and learn, and really go the extra mile and measuring results, we also care about efficiency. So we look at for organizations that are doing something right and are ready to scale, often through the use of technology, they're not exclusively. And then iteration is also one of our core values, given our roots and technology. So partners that can be nimble, can show an ability to adapt and learn, are willing to make mistakes, get messy, but then learn from that we're all about that. And that's really important to us as a new foundation, because we need to learn as well what works and what doesn't. So there's a lot in terms of our values and what we look for in our partners. But that said, we are getting more focused through our strategy work. And there are a couple areas of focus that will be important to us as we go forward. One of these that I've alluded to is areas where there labor market mismatches. So where we see or predict strong labor demand and low supply, because that provides outsized opportunities for wage growth. So examples include trucking, which we talked about construction, health care. But also as we look forward, particularly where there are areas of high government investment, we think about green jobs, the semiconductor industry, right due to federal funding through infrastructure act, chips act, inflation Reduction Act, there's a lot of tailwinds in certain sectors that we're paying attention to more likely invest into. And then a second area focus for us is going to be around the influence of technology on the future of work and learning. A topic I know you've talked about a lot on this podcast, but you know, things like AI and their implications on education, training employment, are really interesting to us. And we think there's a potential for real upside for organizations that are really thinking about this creatively. And ethically, I would call out. So that's another area that we're going to be making some announcements about pretty soon.
Alexander Sarlin:I wanted to ask about exactly that. I understand you've made a recent announcement, related to AI, which has not come up much in this call until right now, but is obviously extremely important for the future of the workforce in almost any way you slice it. And I believe there's a new fund, it's an AI for Economic Opportunity Fund. If I have that, right. Tell us more about it. And that's putting AI into some of these amazing projects are fueling some of this, you know, sky's the limit. I'd love to hear how you're thinking about it.
Ellie Bertani:Well, we all know and your listeners know already that AI is rapidly reshaping how people will be working and learning. We have been studying a lot of reports on this, including one by Goldman Sachs, that estimates roughly two thirds of current jobs are going to be exposed somehow to some degree of AI automation. But even more interesting to us is the implications of how these tools can be used to further economic opportunity. Right? Again, we think there is upside here. For those willing to approach this in a creative, responsible, ethical way. We think there are potential opportunities and everything from hiring processes to recruitment and skill development, access to education, increasing the efficiency of organization so they could scale more quickly. There's a lot to explore here. So we are announcing the launch of an AI for Economic Opportunity Fund in July, hopefully around the time that this podcast gets published. And we're inviting both other funders to come to the table with us. So this fund is up to$2 million in matched funding for other funders that join us. And we're interested in partnerships, nonprofits, technologists, companies that want to come together and submit applications for this fund. We're really excited to support so our timeline is soliciting applications through June, July and August, we will then take these concept notes and request to certain to submit full proposals with the goal of making funding allocations in November. So hopefully enough time for a lot of your listeners to get excited. We welcome multiple concept notes from organizations, they don't have to submit just one we want all of the creative ideas that are out there. And it could be far beyond what I just outlined, right, which are the natural, obvious spaces. We're looking for really innovative different ideas, anything that will drive increased earnings through the use of AI tools and services. So very excited about launching this fun, very welcoming of any of your listeners who may want to apply. For those of you in the audience who may be interested in learning more. You could follow the announcements at get lab foundation.org/future of work, and all of the application materials will be there. So I hope many of you are interested in joining us.
Alexander Sarlin:I can almost hear the clacking of keyboards as people go to that website and send messages to Slack or you mails to their colleagues saying we've got to get on this. I'm incredibly excited about that. And just the idea of framing education and work as sort of combined into this economic opportunity or learning and work is so exciting. It feels like, you know, we talk so much in this podcast about edtech at all levels. But so many adults see learning and education as a work accelerant. That's what it is. And it's the majority of adults see it that way. And I feel like just seeing in a clear eyed way, how do we get people to the outcomes they want, not just enrolled in a program, graduating the program, getting the career getting the earnings, is really exciting. It's a very refreshing perspective compared to some of the hand waving that we see from others. So really, really exciting. So I'd love to talk more about this. We're coming on the end of our time. So I always end with two questions. The first is what do you see as one of the most exciting trends or you can say more than one if you'd like, that you see in the Ed Tech landscape right now what's, you know, you talk to tons of people, what's coming around the bend right now.
Ellie Bertani:So I'm not gonna go some of the obvious places like talking about AI. For me, and for our organization, I actually think one of the most important things is collaboration across sectors, I really think that that's in this space, the most promising way to make a true impact on people's lives. And that extending our arms, you know, across is the most important thing that we should be thinking about these days. Certainly for us. Boring, it's kind of hard to do. But it's
Alexander Sarlin:important. It's hard. But it's not boring. I mean, we can go so much further together, as they say in the old phrase, but it's really, really true, especially when you're talking about enormous sets like this, I'm gonna go back to that 1896 thing one more time, the way they got all that done in universities was they pulled 10 people out of high schools, out of colleges out of workforce, all these different folks together. And that group together defined, you know, how the pathway for basically high school to college was going to work and how, how, what a unit was going to be for both sides. And you had to bring people together from different sectors to make it work, because there's so many stakeholders when it comes to economic opportunity. I love that answer. And what is one resource that could be a book newsletter blog podcast, that you would recommend for somebody who wants to learn more about any of the topics we've discussed today, or just learn more about the way you think about the world?
Ellie Bertani:So I spent a little bit of time thinking about this. And I'm going to suggest one that's not sort of poorly in the EdTech space, but has influenced me a lot recently, which is a book called A time to build by Yuval Levine, which is a book around how do we rebuild trust in institutions and collaboration across institutions, in our current times, where distrust in institutions, and an expertise is becoming more and more problematic, and trying for us to collectively achieve our goals. It's not a hard book. It's fascinating. It gives a lot of great history and background on why trust is eroding, and a lot of important suggestions on how to rebuild it through building great culture and institutions. And it's been a real groundbreaking book for me to read over the past few
Alexander Sarlin:months. Fascinating. And, yeah, it does feel like we need a little bit of a reset of trust, certainly in this country, and maybe even around the world, if we're going to really collaborate in the ways we need to in these grand collaborations to really move the world forward and to tackle this AI issue. It could change sample life very well for all of us, or it could be very disastrous, and we have to work together. You're seeing Europe and China and us and everybody sort of do it in silos. Can't do it that way. So it's gonna be really interesting. Ellie Bertani, CEO and President of the GitLab Foundation, fascinating conversation all about economic mobility. Thanks for being here. This has been really interesting. I appreciate you being here with us on Ed Tech insiders.
Ellie Bertani:Thank you again for having me. It's been a real privilege.
Alexander Sarlin:Thanks for listening to this episode of Ed Tech insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the Ed Tech community. For those who want even more Ed Tech Insider subscribe to the free ed tech insiders newsletter on substack. This episode of Ed Tech insiders is sponsored by magic ed tech. Magic Ed Tech has helped the world's top educational publishers and ad tech companies build learning products and platforms that millions of learners and teachers use every day. Chances are that you're probably using a learning product that they've helped design or build. Companies like Pearson McGraw Hill, imagine learning new The American Museum of Natural History have used their help to design or build some of their learning products. Now magic wants to bring its pedagogical and engineering expertise to make your key learning products accessible, sticky, and well adopted. Check them out at Magic Ed tech.com, which is Ma GIC. Edie Te ch.com and when you get in touch tell them Ed Tech Insider sent you
